First Month in Papua

Hi friends! We have been in Papua (an island in the western part of Indonesia) for over a month now.

Here are photos of some of the highlights of our time here:

I took this photo in the Singapore airport when Daniel and Zoe slept during a layover. While traveling for 2 days was hard, we felt blessed to get some sleep (we slept for a day in Jakarta in the airport hotel before our overnight flight to Sentani, Papua) and we were happy that Zoe did well.

Daniel and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary on August 1st at the restaurant at a new hotel in Sentani. It was very nice! We were very thankful to have friends here who let Zoe eat dinner with them while we were out. :) In this photo we are drinking some very strong ginger tea.

Daniel has been loving flying here in Papua! This is a photo he took when he rode along for a MAF flight to see how things work here. I try not to be jealous that he gets to see little villages, beautiful mountains, and all sorts of interesting people.

Daniel went kayaking on the lake near where we live. Fun! Zoe and I slept while he did this. :)

And Daniel also has been bike riding with some Indonesian guys who work at MAF and their friends. I usually sleep when he's out doing this too. Funny how many of his activities are early in the morning...

Zoe is loving getting into cabinets and pulling herself up on things. She can also stand up without pulling up. No walking yet!

She likes crawling into the cabinets too.

Zoe loves swinging. There is a playground right by our apartment here!

And of course playing with Daddy!

We have visited two beaches! This photo is from a pebble beach that had really good snorkeling.

Here we are on our way to a sandy beach.

Zoe liked "swimming"

But she especially liked playing in the sand! I think she ate quite a bit of it!

We visited the beach with our friends the Lundholms. You can see their blog post about it by here. Other people came by from time to time wanting to take pictures with the cute kids.

These blue starfish are really big and I think they're amazing! We enjoyed snorkeling at this beach too!

While Daniel is flying or working in the the hanger each day I spend most of my time taking care of Zoe, doing laundry and other household tasks, hanging out with other wives and kids on the MAF base, cooking, etc. So it's really exciting for me when we take trips to the beach or just get off of base to do other things. Yesterday was our first time going to an Indonesian church (we've been going to a very nice English service at the nearby school). I really liked going to the Indonesian church and hope to go there often! There's still a lot that I don't understand, but I need the language and cultural practice!

I hope you enjoyed these photos! I think we are adjusting well to daily life here.

Lots of love to all of you who are reading this,

Joy